Thursday, January 31, 2008

Nancy Eimers was recently awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Achievement Award in research/creative activity. This award is based on the accumulated record of a faculty member's outstanding scholarly achievements in research and creative activity. These achievements may be philosophical, historical, literary, scientific, or technical and must constitute significant contributions to understanding and portraying the human condition or the natural world.

Steve Feffer received the College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Achievement Award in teaching. This award is based on the accumulated record of a faculty's outstanding teaching, including graduate and undergraduate classroom instruction, mentoring, independent study, field work, laboratory work, thesis and dissertation advising, undergraduate and graduate advising, curriculum innovation or any other work in which the faculty interact with students to promote learning.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Several Third Coast staff members will be attending AWP's annual bookfair and conference in New York this week. If you are attending the conference, please stop by our table to say hello and check out our newest issue. Highlights of the Fall 2007 issue include Kate Lane's "Red Winter," which Chang Rae Lee chose as the winner of our 2007 fiction contest, and outstanding works by Jean Valentine, Seth Abramson, Joanie Mackowski, Jessica Roeder, Charles McLeod, Porter Fox, Jonathan Weinert, Rynn Williams, Brian Leary, Eric Gansworth, Caitlin Horrocks, and many others.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Richard Utz recently published "'There Are Places We Remember': Situating the Medieval Past in Postmedieval Cultural Memories," in vol. 6.2 (2004 [2007]) of Transfiguration: Nordic Journal of Christianity and the Arts, a periodical published through Museum Tusculanum Press at the University of Copenhagen. The essay investigates aspects of mnemonic bridging between the medieval past and various postmedieval periods, specifically the desire to create reified (topographic) evidence of one's imagined origins (memorialization, musealization, etc.).

The Western Michigan University chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, has been recognized by the national Sigma Tau Delta organization as "one of the most active, vital chapters in the country." The chapter has been invited to participate in the Outstanding Chapter exhibition at the national convention in Louisville in March to help educate and mentor other chapters.

Sigma Tau Delta has over 700 chapters in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean and inducts over 8,000 members each year. The WMU chapter was founded in 2005. Three WMU Sigma Tau Deltas participated in the 2006 national convention in Portland, Oregon, when the chapter was only a few months old. Last year, the WMU convention contingent included nine undergraduates and one graduate student, and this year, eleven WMU undergraduate students have been accepted to present their original creative or scholarly work at the convention in Louisville.

For the third year in a row, all of the WMU students who submitted to present at the annual convention have been accepted. According to the national convention chair, organizers received more submissions this year than in any other year in the convention’s history, making it the most competitive selection process to date. Congratulations to

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Renowned applied linguist Dr. Susan Gass of MSU will give a presentation on input/interaction approaches to second language acquisition on Friday, February 1, from 2:00 - 2:45, followed by discussion and refreshments. The event will take place in the Multicultural Center of Trimpe Hall and is open to the public. --The Linguistics Steering Committee (LSC) at WMU

Monday, January 21, 2008

Christopher Nagle will be providing the Spring Keynote talk in the English department's Scholarly Speakers Series on Thursday, 1/24 at 7:00pm on the 10th floor of Sprau Tower. The lecture, Tales from the Romantic Closet; or, The Perverse Afterlife of Sensibility draws from Nagle's recently published book,Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era (Palgrave, 2007) as well as more recent research conducted while on sabbatical. The event will be will be followed by a Q&A session and a small reception. All are welcome!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Third Coast Reading Series is happy to announce its first reading of the semester will take place this Friday, January 25 at 7:30pm on the 10th floor of Sprau. Playwright Karen Wurl, poet Beth Marzoni, and creative non-fiction writer Marin Heinritz will share their work. All are welcome. Refreshments will be provided. Help spead the word.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

New Issues Poetry & Prose will be at table 17 in the bookfair of the AWP Conference in New York City and invites anyone attending the conference to visit the table. We will have book signings by the authors of our recent titles. On Friday, February first, Geoff Rips, author of The Truth, will be featured in the AWP Award Series Reading, introduced by novelist Nicholas Delbanco. Delbanco chose The Truth to win the 2006 AWP Award for the Novel, an award administered by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and published by New Issues.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Nic Witschi is going to discuss Sherman Alexie's novel, Flight, for WMU's Alumni Book Club on January 31, 2008, 7-8:30 pm, Walwood Hall (East Campus). Alexie is considered one of America's most gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of national stature. Please find more information at www.wmich.edu.alumni.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

This is just a reminder that Sigma Tau Delta will be meeting this week. We will be holding two identical meetings that students can choose to attend one of. The meetings are Tuesday (15) and Wednesday (16) at 8:00 on the 10th floor of Sprau Tower (not the Bernhard Center). Please encourage students to attend one of the meetings for the International English Honor Society. These will be informational meetings including our progress thus far as well as information for new members. Thank you!

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's latest book of poetry, The River is Rising, is available through Amazon.com or through the publisher: Autumn House Press, 87 1/2 Westwood St., Pittsburgh, PA 15211 (412) 381-4261, www.autumnhouse.org. ISBN: 978-1-932870-18-3.

Colleagues: Please ask your students to visit the Prague Summer Program website, praguesummer.com, and to feel free to contact me with any questions (richard.katrovas@wmich.edu, katrovas@aol.com). Tell them, please, that the PSP is not just for creative writers, and that every WMU student receives a John Woods Scholarship worth up to $1,000. I’ll be available to visit classes to pitch the Prague Summer Program Monday through Friday from ten to twelve, then from one to three, January 14 through January 25. If you teach a class outside these time blocks and you’d like me to visit, let me know and I'll try to work something out.Richard KatrovasProfessor of English, Founding DirectorWestern Michigan University’s Prague Summer Programrichardkatrovas.com

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Ilana Nash has been asked to contribute a chapter to a new volume in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, to be edited by Catherine Nickerson of Emory University. Dr Nash's chapter, drawing upon her book American Sweethearts, will focus on the paradox of competing ideologies (freedom and containment) that co-exist in popular literature for youth in the early/mid 20th century, highlighting the simultaneous historical developments of adolescent peer-culture and the discourses of juvenile delinquency.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Scott Slawinski has been awarded a $1000 grant from the Maine Women Writers Collection to travel to Maine to begin research for his next book, tentatively titled Sally Wood: The Life and Works of Maine's First Gothic Novelist.

NEXT IN THE LATE NIGHT SERIES...AT THE WHOLE ART THEATREThe Art of The One-Act

This compilation of one-act plays was edited by West Michigan’s own Arnie Johnston and Deborah Ann Percy for New Issues Poetry & Prose, and we have chosen four of them to present:Someday, by Allison Williams, directed by Carol ZombroThe Nancy, by Bethany Gauthier, directed by Jennifer HebbenThe Artist, by Michael Hohnstein, directed by Trevor MaherLast Call, by Constance Alexander, directed by Rudy GaunaWHERE: the Whole Art Studio, 246 N. Kalamazoo Mall.WHEN: January 11, 12, 18, and 19 @11:00 PM.HOW MUCH: five bucks (includes free coffee and donuts!)CALL: 345-7529 for information and reservations.We hope you can come and see the shows.Thanks,Arnie & Debby

Monday, January 7, 2008

Eve Salisbury recently published "Violence and the Sacrificial Poet: Gower, the Vox, and the Critics," in On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium, ed. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007).

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Richard Utz recently published "The Chameleon Principle: Reflections on the Status of Arthurian Studies in the Academy" in the Winter, 2007, issue of Arthuriana. The short "essai" is part of a "Round Table" cluster of texts based on a 2005 MLA session on "Cloaks of Invisibility: The Status of Arthurian Studies," organized and edited by Kathleen Coyne Kelley.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Shortly before the holidays, Christopher Nagle visited the Kalamazoo Gay & Lesbian Resource Center to lead a discussion of Jane Austen's Emma, focusing on long-debated issues of gender and sexual deviance in Austen's masterpiece. The presentation and group discussion was part of the KGLRC's new Books That Matter series. For more information about exciting upcoming events in the series, go to www.kglrc.org/events/books.

Whether he was one of the last frontiersmen, or a cold-blooded murderer, JesseJames became a legend and celebrity in post-Civil War America. How he died(from a bullet fired from the gun of an idealistic young man who idolized him)is the story behind THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD.

The film is an expertly crafted and award winning period piece that is makingsome critics "Best 10 Films of 2007" lists.